The Holy Spirit: A Nun in an Old
Plastic Lawn Chair by the Lake
by Griff Martin
by Griff Martin
A Sermon on John 14:23-29
and Psalm 67
For the Sixth Sunday of
Eastertide- May 26, 2019
To the Beloveds of First
Austin: a baptist community of faith
Incarnate and Resurrected God, we
ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and
breathing new reality we can all together experience. Make us aware of your
presence here in this space and in these words, God. For if we are present to
you then nothing else will matter, but if we are not present to you then
nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Christ and the
Comforter. Amen.
He
is Risen! (He is Risen indeed). We only have one more Sunday we say that
together as a community during our Easter celebration, according to church
calendar. Although, hopefully our living that truth is not as limited; that our
entire year is filled with Practicing and Celebrating Resurrection.
So,
I want to start this morning with a personal confession – a dangerous risk in
preaching, using the public space to share a private truth. However, after
weighing the risk, I have decided to go for it and share a story I have never
shared in a pulpit before. In high school, I had a spiritual growth class… (You
know that feeling when you realized that kids in other states did not take
Texas history in 4th and 7th grade? And you were so confused -- how can one
graduate without knowing our state flower and the Alamo? That is how I feel as
a Church school kid about kids in school who did not take spiritual growth
class alongside Algebra and Chemistry). This class was taught by a dynamic
woman who had the spiritual gift of tongues and we spent a great deal of our
time together with her describing in elaborate detail the gift of tongues.
Now
her personal theology was that this was a gift that God gave everyone, and it
was testimony to the depth of your faith, so we spent a lot of class talking
about this gift of tongues and how we could embrace that gift within ourselves.
Looking back, I don’t question her particular spiritual gift, but I do question
her theology about tongues as evidence of faith and also her ability to do
lesson plans. We spent a lot of time on tongues.
She
regularly encouraged us to spend some time in our prayer closets (as if every
High School kid has a prayer closet), and her instructions were that we should
just start babbling. She defined this as just making whatever noises comes
naturally to you, until the Spirit catches you and off you will go, like
learning to ride a broom at Hogwarts. Looking back, I now realize this is a
strange homework assignment.
Now
picture me – Young Griff, already so much a 3 with a 2 wing on the Enneagram
and wanting everyone to love me and to make everyone proud of me, a people
pleaser to the core…. A little awkward (no, a lot awkward) in his teenage self
and very worried about spirituality and pleasing God…. Picture that guy in his
bedroom one afternoon when the house was totally empty and after a lot of
thought lying down on his denim bedspread, closing his eyes and taking a lot of
deep courageous breaths and then finally having the foolishness to start just
making noises happen, hoping the Spirit of God would catch me…. I will not
demonstrate, that is the gift of your imagination.
There
is so much to unpack there. And this afternoon, feel free to ponder that your
pastor is the kid who, instead of waiting for the house to be empty to try
smoking or watching R-rated HBO films, was the guy who waited for the house to
be empty to try to pray in tongues. Who is that kid, we ask?
What
I can say is that it did not work. The Spirit, well, she passed me right on by –
or so I thought. Nothing happened. I tried as hard as I could, and I did
everything I was taught to do until finally the spirit of laugher took over me.
I might not have spoken in tongues, but I found another of God’s holy languages
(maybe the most holy language): laughter.
A
few years later, I was sitting one afternoon with my spiritual director. Picture
the most Southern nun you can think of – like Flannery O’Conner in a habit. Now
picture her sitting in an old lawn chair by a lake where she called me earlier
that day and said, “Meet me here this afternoon; It’s too pretty to talk about
God inside.” That is good theology right there… We talked about my struggle to
pray (part of that teenage battle still being fought), and she asked me to list
all the different ways I had attempted to pray. When I mentioned tongues, she
began to cough as though something had gone down the wrong pipe and was stuck
in her throat. As a Catholic nun, this whole “tongues” thing was another world
for her. So, she asked me to tell the story, the one I just told…. And when I finished,
she started laughing – like, until she had tears coming down her cheeks,
laughing.
Finally,
she looked at me and she said, “I don’t theologically get the whole tongues
thing, but I know this: it’s all about giving up control and it’s about freedom
and spontaneity and you are telling me you tried to control that, like you
planned for it, tried to orchestra it and control it?” She went on to say that
this story summed up all my theological fears and anxieties, trying to control
the uncontrollable. She stated that if a DSM diagnosis handbook had a listing
for folks who try to control things, that disease would have a picture of me
next to it. She then paused and looked at me and continued, “It’s probably why
you got that horribly-labeled degree, Master of Divinity.” Another pause. “But
Griff, don’t be fooled. You don’t master God. You never can and you never will.
Learn that and you might learn to pray and actually to live.” Another pause. “I
think that is enough for today.”
I
wish I could tell you she then vanished into thin air, and I realized that she
was truly the Holy Spirit – which I do believe she embodied for me that day.
However, she got up and hugged me and told me she would see me next week. Never
again did she say anything that wise. However, what she had said was enough for
a lifetime.
I
don’t know that I am doing a lot better today. I continually find myself
grasping for control in whatever way I can, even if it’s things that don’t
belong to me but belong to another dimension, to a bigger mystery, to something
greater. It’s not easy. I am the guy who every morning while doing the stair
machine has to be reminded by my friend next to me, “Griff, don’t hold the
handles so tight, it won’t measure your heartbeat that way.” I can hold things
so tight that I lose my own heart.
I
don’t think I am alone here.
I
think that is all of our fears when it comes to the Spirit of God.
Today’s
text is not an easy one. It’s theologically known as John’s Farewell Discourse.
Which, it’s not at all, because it’s Jesus’ Farewell Discourse in the Gospel of
John. Maybe it’s better to think of this as Jesus’ parting instructions.
It’s
simple: The Holy Spirit is coming.
Of
course, when Jesus says it, it sounds more like this: You thought you knew God,
and then I showed up. Well, hold on, because you are about to get a third
dancing partner and if you thought this whole God becoming flesh thing was
something, just wait until you see God becoming air, God becoming everything.
This is not yet finished; in fact, it’s really only beginning. The world is
tough and that is not going to change, but I am giving you all you need to be
able to live in that world. Hold onto her, but not too tightly. Give her space
and follow wherever She leads. She is an Advocate, Helper, Companion, and
Comforter. She is the one to watch now, if you can. She is the present tense of
God in our world.
And
in my reading of it, in my imagination, Jesus pauses here, and a gentle breeze
blows over them. And then it gets a bit stronger, and then it suddenly stops – and
Jesus just smiles, like he has seen an old friend. And the disciples have
goosebumps and hair raised on their arms like they are chilled, and their mouths
fill with that feeling you get when you just think about Key Lime Pie.
It’s
anticipation and the sense of more… always clues that the Spirit is around.
And
then Jesus speaks that final word: Peace. Wholeness.
So,
it’s funny that as a church we have focused so little on the Spirit, which is
almost all we need to focus on, according to Jesus in his parting instructions.
I am as guilty of this as anyone, maybe more so as a pastor. I think it’s time
we give the Spirit a little more room; She does not always dance a tidy neat
little dance. She needs space.
Who
is She?
I
think of the Holy Spirit as the member of the Trinity who looks closest to your
crazy favorite aunt. She is the one you love and adore. She makes everything
better. She is strong in ways that your family needs but does not admittedly
rely on. She has a way of always being there when you need her to be there and
yet she is entirely unreliable. She is the one who you know will show up at events
with bags and bags of the best presents and all the sugary sweets, but she is
going to show up about 4 hours late and you are certain that she is late
because she did her present and grocery shopping in the 4 hours that made her 4
hours late. And yet, when your grandmother dies, she is there before anyone
else and she has everything arranged and her schedule is clear and open so that
she can handle this for next however long she is needed, and you know in your
heart of hearts that if she was not there nothing would be all right, but if
she was there, things were okay. She is the one who when hospice comes, knows
all the questions to ask and gets right to the point. She is the one who when
you are planning the funeral will say, “this is what we need to do.” And she is
right. And then she is the one when you get to the funeral, she has candy in
her purse for your kids.
That’s
the Spirit of God.
And
sometimes She looks like my Aunt Holly. And sometimes She looks like the Texas
Red Yucca cacti in full bloom or the breeze on a spring day or the rain after a
long drought or that verse of Scripture that suddenly you see everywhere or
that phone call from a friend you have not talked to in forever or Paul Pew
playing Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue
or a stranger on the sidewalk holding a sign or your kids’ grins or you kids’
tears or a piece of art that seems to talk directly to your heart or a hymn
whose words are imprinted on you or Kacey Musgraves beautiful reminder of hope
when she sings about rainbows or a stranger who speaks a truth that makes you
question if they have read your mind or reading Mary Oliver in the morning or a
sunset or a nun sitting in a cheap lawn chair by the lake one afternoon. You
get the idea.
Here,
there, everywhere.
One
of my favorite theologians Jurgen Moltmann cautions us not to think, ‘when is
the last time you felt or experienced the Holy Spirit?’ He says it’s that type
of talk that drives people away from Christianity and makes us seem holier-than-thou,
and a bit spooky. He says it is insider language that even most insiders don’t
understand. He says, instead, to ask this: “When is the last time you felt the
spirit of life?” And then he adds, “9 times out of 10, if not all 10, that is
the Holy Spirit.”
It’s
the wind that you can sometimes feel, sometimes see, sometimes taste, sometimes
hear… but that you can never control.
Which
scares us to death because it means that we might not be captains of our lives
like we desire, but instead be sails just waiting for the wind to pick up and
see where it takes us. Which means that our to-do lists and agendas better
always come with a footnote attached, *until we know more, and that every
business meeting in the church better come with the warning, “until the Sprit
directs elsewhere,” and every worship service better have some space in it so
the Spirit can dance. Everything we do as people better have some space for
“not my will but yours, Spirit of the Living God.”
So,
who is She?
I
want to end this morning with this poem which, as is true for most poems, is a
prayer. It’s maybe the best description of the Spirit of God I have ever found.
It’s written by the poet David Swanger; a poet from Georgia relatively unknown
to folks who don’t regularly listen to Garrison Keillor. It’s titled, “What the
Wing Says.”
The
wing says, "I am the space behind you,
a
dent in the fender, hands you remember
for
the way they touched you. You can look
back
and song will still throb. I am air
moving
ahead, the outermost edge of desire,
the
ripple of departure and arrival. But
I
will speak more plainly: you think you are
the
middle of your life, your own fulcrum,
your
years poised like reckonings in the balance.
This
is not so: dismiss the grocer of your soul.
Nothing
important can be weighed, which is why
I
am the silver river of your mornings and
the
silver lake curled around your dark dreams.
I
am not wax nor tricks stolen from birds.
I
know you despair at noon, when sky overflows
with
the present tense, and at night as you lie
among
those you have wronged; I know you have failed
in
what matters most, and use your groin to forget.
Does
the future move in only one direction?
Think
how roots find their way, how hair spreads
on
the pillow, how watercolors give birth to light.
Think
how dangerous I am, because of what I offer you."
Jesus’
parting words could have easily been, “I am headed elsewhere, other
travels to make. But I am not leaving you alone; I am sending the Spirit, and
She will handle things. She is dangerous because of what she offers you. But
She is also life. So, hold onto Her, make room for Her, because She alone is
the only dance partner you will ever need.”
May
we be so bold as to make room for Her in our church, in our world and in our
hearts.
Amen
and Amen.
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